Are Salt Generators more economical than bleach over the lifetime of the pool?

[chem geek]

Carl,

You are right that the initial installation cost will not get recovered anytime soon. I separated out that cost from the ongoing cost of chlorine generation and cell replacement. I guess that makes my analysis useful for people buying a home that already has an SWG and figuring the ongoing costs, but isn't useful for a new purchase decision where the only reason to buy an SWG would be for convenience, not for economics.

Waterbear (Evan),

Yes, I screwed up. I used 1 ounce instead of 2 when I put the number in my spreadsheet. My bad. I will correct my original post above and yes, that would double the cost for chlorine, but the SWG generating amount would need to double as well so the payback from the allocated costs is faster. I'm glad more than one person looks at this! And yes, I didn't include the mostly one-time salt and the on-going acid costs (I don't know what those are so did not include those). Thanks for catching my mistake!

Richard